Rebagels. My main is @franzanth.

Let’s get carcinized.

With the crab facts advent calendar, you can scratch off the iridescence to reveal one crab fact every day! We dug deep into the facts vault to bring you some deep cuts. We know you'll love 'em.

Get a calendar here 👇🏻

Art by @franzanth

Show your loved ones how much you care by giving them CRAB FACTS, AN ADVENT CALENDAR

Let’s get carcinized.

With the crab facts advent calendar, you can scratch off the iridescence to reveal one crab fact every day! We dug deep into the facts vault to bring you some deep cuts. We know you'll love 'em.

Get a calendar here 👇🏻

Art by @franzanth

Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside form the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish.

We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, [highlighting begins] but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. [end highlighting]

But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?

Inspired by our vacation in Müritz: What if Earth’s atmospheric oxygen again reached the 30-35% of the Carboniferous? We talked about Meganeura’s return, and then I thought - what if dragonflies which live close to forests evolved into ground-based hunters? They’d dart around swiftly between trees, their second pair of legs now grabbing devices, and their leftover pair of wings would help with steering and finisher jumps.

Extremely happy to show off my first fursuit for Fursuit Friday!! I got Monty made by the wonderful Cochayuyo Creations on twitter, he did such an amazing job with my lobster guy and he's one of the few makers that I've seen that does invertebrate characters!! Please go check him out!

For InverteFest, I wanted to focus on the incredible krill that populate the world’s oceans! Life on Earth depends on these little guys as a food source as they migrate between the surface and ocean depths 🧡

Greetings, chordate comrades.

#InverteFest is officially here. We invite you to nerd out about invertebrates for an entire week on whichever social platform you're on. Feel free to reupload this image to spread the word!

Can't find critters in the wild?

Show us: - Your pet snail - Your Vivillon collection - That scifi book about sentient clams - Your OC based on a parasitic nematode - That game where you played as a crab with a sword

Feel free to come up with your own idea, we don't gatekeep fun!

Want to contribute to community science?

If you have an iNaturalist account, you could contribute by surveying your local critters! Join the project using this link.

Note that only photos taken between 24-30 April your LOCAL time will be counted!

The time frame and project URL will vary each season, but I plan on reblogging this post each season and updating the dates and links.

Strange Symmetries #13: The Hermit Crab Cycle

Hermit crabs are crustaceans that first appeared at the start of the Jurassic, about 201 million years ago. Despite their common name they aren't actually true crabs, instead being a classic example of convergently evolving a crab-like body plan via carcinization.

They also have noticeably asymmetric bodies, with abdomens that coil to one side and differently-sized front claws.

Pagurus bernhardus by Arnstein Rønning | CC BY 3.0

And while modern hermit crabs are famous for inhabiting scavenged snail shells, their fossil record suggests this wasn't always the case.

Originally, they seem to have lived in ammonite shells.

Palaeopagurus vandenengeli lived in what is now northern England during the Early Cretaceous, about 130 million years ago. Around 4-5cm long (~1.6-2"), it was found preserved inside the shell of the ammonite species Simbirskites gottschei.

Its left claw was much larger than its right, and together they would have been used to block the shell opening when it was hiding away inside. And while the exact shape of its abdomen isn't known, it probably asymmetrically coiled to the side to accomodate the spiralling shape of the host shell.

Hermit crabs seem to have switched over to using gastropod shells by the Late Cretaceous, around 90-80 million years ago, possibly due to marine snails developing much stronger sturdier shells during this period in response to the increasing prevalence of specialized shell-crushing predators. The more upright snail shells would also have been much easier to drag around the seafloor than ammonite shells – and meant that they were ultimately less affected by the total disappearance of ammonites during end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

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